One less-discussed benefit of being an avid Dr. Pimple Popper fan, in addition to the endless entertainment factor, is the ability to shock your friends and family with how much medical terminology you’ve picked up along the way. Regular viewers will tell you that a lot of hard-to-pronounce jargon gets tossed around by Dr. Sandra Lee, M.D., (and Co.), but there’s a word most popaholics commit to memory pretty damn quick: cyst.
Dr. Lee defines a cyst as “a benign growth commonly found in the skin that typically appears on the face, neck, chest, or back, but can occur anywhere on the body.” What differentiates a cyst from a microscopic blackhead or a squishy lipoma is the contents: a free-floating sack of wet skin cells, which creates a cottage cheese-like consistency. Cysts are often accompanied by some sort of odor — which smells exactly like what you would imagine a collection of festering moist skin cells to smell like upon hitting the air.
As you can imagine, these pops are some of the gnarliest Dr. Lee faces in surgery. If you’re intrigued by squirting cysts of the facial variety, you’re going to love this pro guide to the wild world of cystic pops. Ahead, Dr. Pimple Popper shares the craziest cases she’s ever seen.
Cease & Decyst
We’re not going to beat around the bush: This surgery is gnarly. Truly only the most devoted popaholics will be able to make it through the entire 30-minute video and watch the veiny, pulsating lump the size of a doorknob crumble into a cottage cheese-like mountain of pus without losing their lunch.
A Cheeky Cyst… Piece by Piece
At first glance, this little lump may look like an angry, inflamed cheek pimple. But if you watch just one minute into the video — provided you have a very strong stomach and aren’t fazed by bloody sutures — you’ll see that there’s actually a hardened marble-sized growth lodged under the skin. Dr. Lee is ultimately able to squeeze the cyst, but it takes a lot of slicing and sewing to get the puckered skin back to flat.
It Pays to be Per-Cyst-ant…
This video is 24 minutes long, but it’s cringeworthy from the first second. There’s a big lump on the patient’s cheek and, with just a thin slice and a push at the sides, there’s an explosion of wet, pasty white skin cells. Honestly, you get what you came for after two minutes, but you’ll want to stick around to see how Dr. Lee thoroughly cleans out the divot and sews up the excess skin nice and tight.
A Recurrent Cyst Removed Via Punch Biopsy
This is an interesting case of the recurrent cyst: one that’s been partially excised in the past, but has grown back, taking on a misshapen form underneath the skin. Dr. Lee uses a punch biopsy method of removal, which uses a needle to create a tiny hole in the center of the cyst that dilates and allows pus to shoot through to the surface of the skin. If you’re a fan of blackhead videos, this one’s for you.
Large Epidermoid Cyst Excised on the Back
This surgery is pretty routine — a slice-and-squeeze kind of deal — but what spews out from under the skin is like nothing you’ve seen before. Instead of the chunky wet skin cells that typically spill out of an infected cyst, this is like a fountain of runny dark-brown sludge erupting from the patient’s back bump. Per usual, viewer discretion is definitely advised.
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